Synopsis

Rahul Pandita was fourteen years old in 1990 when he was forced to leave his home in Srinagar along with his family, who were Kashmiri Pandits: the Hindu minority within a Muslim-majority Kashmir that was becoming increasingly agitated with the cries of ‘Azadi’ from India.
The heartbreaking story of Kashmir has so far been told through the prism of the brutality of the Indian state, and the pro-independence demands of separatists. But there is another part of the story that has largely remained unrecorded and buried.
Our Moon Has Blood Clots is the unspoken chapter in the story of Kashmir, in which it was purged of the Kashmiri Pandit community in a violent ethnic cleansing backed by Islamist militants. Hundreds of people were tortured and killed, and about 350,000 Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave their homes and spend the rest of their lives in exile. In this book, Rahul Pandita has written a deeply personal, powerful and unforgettable story of history, home and loss.

Author Profile

Rahul Pandita

Rahul Pandita is a Yale World Fellow, 2015. He is the author of three bestselling books: Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir; Hello, Bastar: The Untold Story of India’s Maoist Movement and The Absent State: Insurgency as an Excuse for Misgovernance [co-authored]. He has reported extensively from various theaters of war, including Iraq and Sri Lanka.

In India, Rahul Pandita is mostly known for his reportage on Maoist insurgency in central and eastern India, and on the turmoil in Kashmir in northern India. He is the recipient of the International Red Cross Award for conflict reporting. He is the former Opinion and Special Stories Editor of The Hindu.